Together

 

Psalm 105

Romans 12:9-21

During the years I was serving as a campus minister there were a variety of different Christian student groups, and I got to know some of the young adults who were active in the others. Our ministry focused primarily on learning and worship and fellowship. But there were other groups that focused on evangelizing. One of the students who was very active in one of those groups shared with me some stories about his evangelizing. He and another student went door to door in the dorms to invite others to join them for Bible study.

They didn’t get a lot of yeses. In fact, they faced a lot of angry people who would say things like, “You Christians are such hypocrites! You say one thing and do another.” That wasn’t unusual. But what was unusual was the way these two young men responded to it. They’d say, “yes, you are right. We say one thing and do another. We don’t live up to our hopes and expectations. We sin and fall short of the glory of God. We know that. We’re just trying to do better. And we want to invite you to join us in trying to do better.”

These guys were responding to the skeptics in unexpected ways. They were, essentially, confessing their sin to them.

It’s not unlike another story I heard about Christian students at a college in Oregon. Finding themselves in a distinct minority on a campus that was largely hostile toward Christianity, they decided to set up a confession booth during a college festival. But it was the opposite of what was expected. The Christian students invited others to sit down and hear the Christians confessing the sins of the church. They were saying to the non-Christians “I’m sorry” for the ways you have been hurt by the church.

It’s a little disarming, isn’t it?

And it is much like what Paul is exhorting the Roman Christians to do.

Unlike most of his other churches Paul wrote to, the church in Rome was not one that he had founded. In fact, Paul had probably never even visited Rome. But he knew this church and the problems they were facing simply because they were very human problems: the biggest challenge to peace and harmony is the fact of other people. If it weren’t for other people, we all could get along just fine.

Have you ever met someone who didn’t have tensions with other people now and then? If you actually have known someone like that, you probably thought they were really weird. When I think of the most angelic human I have ever known, someone whom everyone thought of as a saint, I remember the time she sat down with me and let me know how angry she felt at people who didn’t understand her ministry of serving the poor in our community. This saint, she would get really angry sometimes. Because she was human.

Like churches everywhere, the church in Rome was facing great challenges learning to live together in peace. Paul was concerned, because he loved them. But also because he knew if these tensions could not be addressed there would be great harm to the further growth and health of the church. How could they move outward and invite new people into the family if there was so much trouble within the family?

And so Paul wrote to the church attempting to counsel them without judging. Without taking sides. Showing love and honor to all the members. And here we see he is asking them to do the same.

Hate what is evil, he says, but let love be genuine. Love one another. Give. Bless. Honor. Rejoice. Overcome evil with good. There is no telling who he thought was perpetrating evil in the community, but it is likely everyone had their share in it.

It is a constant struggle the church faces, to live the way Paul encourages, the way Jesus teaches. But if we stop struggling…if we let these words become empty phrases, platitudes, that’s when we hear others say, “You Christians; you’re such hypocrites.”

The problems of the Roman church are no different, really, from the problems of the church anywhere. Sometimes it is hard to get along. Hard to show love. Hard to  avoid judging. Hard to be humble.

But do these things, Paul says, and you will heap burning coals on their heads. Not literally, of course, because he has just forbidden them to engage in any kind of retribution. What he is saying is something like “kill them with kindness.”

Again, not literally killing them, of course. Just a little humor to help the medicine go down.

Because it is not easy to follow Christ’s teachings. It is not easy to be Christlike. It is not easy to be the church. But it is good, and as many times as we fail, we must try and try again.

And so we do the kinds of things that we have going on today. We baptize children into the family of Christ, and we make promises to love them and care for them, guide them toward Jesus. And we send our children out into the world with our prayers and our blessings, and our tokens meant to remind them always that they are never alone, that we are all in this together with them. And we take the time to meet as a body and elect and ordain new leaders in our congregation with our gratitude and our prayers.

And may we never let the words we say be empty promises.

In everything we do, if we follow Christ’s way, we seek to live peaceably, to love one another, to respond to hate with love. We will never claim that it is easy or that we have it all under control – because it isn’t, and we don’t. We will never get it just right, but if we keep on working toward authentic love, we will be blessed with blessings enough to share.